Authors: John Case
Danny shrugged. “Not such a big family. Two brothers and me. No generals or senators.”
“You’re better off,” his host joked.
When the espressos arrived, accompanied by a plate of pistachio baklava, Danny asked about the tree rings.
Barzan pursed his lips. “We’ll get into that later. Tell me—how much do you know about us?”
“Which ‘us’?”
“The Yezidis,” Barzan replied. “Or the Kurds, for that matter.”
Danny remembered the conversation that he’d had with Father Inzaghi. “Inzaghi talked about it,” he said, “but . . . I was pretty focused on the computer.” He paused and tried to recall. “I remember, he said they worship the devil—the Yezidis, I mean.”
Barzan chuckled. “Most people remember that,” he said, “but there’s a lot more to it.”
The Kurds, he explained, were a people without a country—as the Jews were before Israel. The Kurds’ homeland encompassed the region historians know as Mesopotamia, consisting of bits and pieces—and whole swathes—of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Azerbaijan. “There are thirty million of us,” Barzan told him, “in an area the size of Texas. If we had our own country—if there
was
a Kurdistan—it would have more people than any nation in the Arab League except Egypt. Which is why it will never happen.”
Though they had their own language and customs, Barzan thought it unlikely that the Kurds would ever live in a sovereign state of their own—no matter how hard they fought for it. Tribalism had torn them apart, and the realpolitik of the region conspired to keep them that way.
The Yezidis were one of several Kurdish subethnic groups. Some Kurds were Christians, some were Muslims, some were Zoroastrians, some were Yezidis, and some were simply unclassifiable. But they all had a long history of participating in insurgencies against the governments that ruled them. Not surprisingly, this had led to counterinsurgencies of surpassing violence, with whole villages being razed and the Kurdish language and culture suppressed. In Iraq, the Kurds had been attacked with chemical and biological weapons. In Turkey, they’d been fighting a guerrilla war for decades. It was still going on, but at a lower intensity.
Danny winced. “Sounds rough.”
Barzan shrugged. “I was lucky,” he said. “It was harder for Zebek—a lot harder.”
“How so?”
“When his parents were killed, he was taken to the underground city—”
“There’s an ‘underground city’?”
“There are lots of them,” Barzan replied. “The whole of eastern Anatolia is honeycombed with them. There must be a dozen in Cappadocia alone. Tourists line up to go into them.” He shrugged. “Not so many this far east, although there are some famous ones in Syria.”
“But when you say they’re ‘cities’—”
“They’re more like ant farms. The rock is tufa, so it’s easy to work. And they are ancient. Archaeologists think they go back to 9,000
B.C
.—almost as old as the Sphinx.”
“And they’re big?” Danny asked. “As big as the cistern in Istanbul?”
“Oh, much bigger. The one outside Uzelyurt—Nevazir—is a kilometer across and seven stories deep. It’s got its own ventilation system, trapdoors, and storage areas for food and water,” Barzan told him. “Thousands of people could live in it for weeks.”
“But why? What’s it for? What were
any
of them for?”
“No one knows, really. They were likely places of refuge, you understand, ancient fallout shelters, places to hide when the various conquerors swept through. Anyway, that’s where Zebek was taken after his parents were killed—to Nevazir, underground. It seemed like the safest place to hide him, and in some ways it was. But it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. The people who left him there were killed the next day.”
“So . . . ?”
“So he was alone. He was six years old. The candle burned out—and there he was, in the darkness, thirty meters underground.”
“Jesus—how long was he there?” Danny asked.
Barzan shrugged. “A few days. Maybe four or five.”
“Christ!”
“They said he was pretty disturbed when he came out.”
“Yeah, well, that’ll happen,” Danny remarked, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“It got better for him.”
“How could it not?”
“Some Kurds are simply slaughtered in these periodic . . . repressions. But if your family has money, they can close up the houses and leave. Wait it out, until the situation changes. My parents took me to Paris when I was five. Zebek’s relatives took him to Rome about the same time. I didn’t come back until five or six years ago.”
“So your whole family left?”
Barzan shook his head. “Almost. My grandfather stayed to look after things.”
“You’re talking about Sheik Mounir?”
Barzan nodded.
“It doesn’t surprise you that I know who he is?” Danny asked.
“Of course not. How do you think you got here?”
“I don’t know,” Danny mumbled. “I thought maybe the guy with the Kukoc shirt or the one who’s always going, ‘Buddy, Buddy.’ ”
“Well, of course,” Barzan told him. “They
brought
you, but—”
“They work for Mounir?” Danny suggested.
Barzan frowned. “Not ‘work,’ exactly. They’re more like . . . constituents. They do what he asks, but they also act in his behalf. Sometimes without his knowledge.”
“So Mounir’s like, what? The mayor?”
Barzan laughed. “He’s one of the Elders.”
By the way that he said it, Danny could tell that the
E
was capitalized, and he wondered about it.
Seeing the look on his face, Barzan said, “You’ve been honored.” Then he went on to explain that the Yezidis were led by an Imam, who was chosen for life by a council of nine Elders from different geographic regions.
“Like the pope,” Danny suggested.
“More or less.”
“So if your grandfather is a Yezidi, then you must be one, too.”
Barzan nodded. “The Yezidis—they’re an ancient people, you know. One of the earliest flood myths—the one later considered to be the flood of Noah—this is first known in the myths of the Yezidis of Kurdistan.”
Danny frowned. “So you’re a Yezidi. You worship the devil?” Barzan didn’t look the type.
Barzan smiled. “I’m not religious.”
“So what does that make you—’a lapsed Yezidi’ or something?”
“Exactly.”
“And Sheik Mounir?” Danny asked.
“Ah, well, that’s a different story. My grandfather is very old-school.”
“Which means—”
“That he worships the Peacock Angel, Malak Tawus. ‘Lucifer’ to you.”
Danny blinked.
“Call it devil worship if you want,” Barzan told him, “but that misses the point. What the Yezidis believe is that the Tawus was the most powerful, the most wonderful, of all the angels. God’s favorite.”
“Same as Lucifer,” Danny remarked.
“But in the Yezidi tradition,” Barzan explained, “there’s no fall from grace, no struggle for men’s souls. The
Black Writing
tells us that God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. And then, on the eighth day, he lost interest. His attention turned to other things, and the Tawus became his overseer. One day, we’re told, the Tawus will walk among us on the earth. And then the world will belong to the Yezidis—because we will have been his only followers.”
Danny didn’t see how any of it was relevant to what had happened to him, to Terio, to Patel. So he maneuvered the conversation back to its point of origin. Or tried to. “Last night, you said Terio was sending you some files.”
“E-mail attachments. They never arrived.”
“You said they had to do with tree rings,” Danny reminded him.
Barzan nodded. “I met Chris when he was doing research in Istanbul. We hit it off, and I was able to help him with some contacts in Diyarbakir. He was there when the Imam was assassinated.” Seeing Danny’s surprise, Barzan went on to explain that the Imam was the Yezidis’ spiritual leader, or Guide. At eighty-seven, he’d held the position for nearly fifty years.
“How did it happen?”
Barzan waved the question aside. “Two men on a motorcycle. One drove. The other shot.”
“And they got away?”
Barzan nodded.
“But why?” Danny asked. “If the guy was eighty-seven years old—”
“What you mean is: who?” Barzan paused. “The police blamed it on the Kurdish Workers Party.”
“And
you
?”
“I
know
who did it: Zebek.”
“But if this Imam guy was eighty-seven, why—”
Barzan patted the air with his right hand, as if to say,
Patience.
“After it happened, Chris came to Uzelyurt. He wanted to write about the Yezidi succession. Said it was ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’ And, of course, he wanted to see the Sanjak. He
had
to see the Sanjak.”
It was obvious the word meant nothing to Danny.
“It’s a religious statue,” Barzan explained. “There are a dozen Yezidi tribes, and each of them has its own Sanjak—and some of them have a couple. We keep ours in Nevazir, the underground city I told you about.” At Barzan’s side, one of the dogs lifted his head. His ears trembled to attention, and his muzzle swiveled 180 degrees.
Woooooof.
It was a low, ruminative bark, as if the animal was wondering,
What’s that?
Barzan scratched the dog behind his ears and resumed. “Chris was fascinated by the underground cities. He
said
they were the only example in the world of ‘collective entombment.’ ”
“And there’s a statue down there?”
“The Sanjak.”
“Must be kind of hard to see. I mean, what do you use—a flashlight? Candles?”
Barzan chuckled. “Actually, no one saw it at all for nearly fifty years. And I was . . . well . . . violating the rules to let Chris see it. But—” He shrugged. “As I said, I’m not religious. To me, it’s a cultural artifact.”
“Why is that? That no one saw it for fifty years?”
“For one thing, it would have been destroyed if it hadn’t been hidden.” Seeing the puzzled look on Danny’s face, Barzan went on to explain that “even after Atatürk, this country is still an Islamic society. And you probably know that in Islam it’s forbidden to make images of anything that has a soul. This is why the frescoes in the ancient churches are defaced and why the Muslims plastered over the mosaics in the Aya Sofia. Whenever the Sunnis find pictures, or statues of saints, they destroy them—like the Taliban did with the Buddhas in Afghanistan.” For the first time, Barzan’s English failed him. “What do you call them—the people who break these pictures?”
“Iconoclasts,” Danny suggested, surprising himself.
“Exactly!” Barzan exclaimed. “Everywhere in Turkey, paintings and murals are defaced. The faces are scratched out, the images destroyed. Animals, too. Even before Islam became dominant, there were Christian iconoclasts—back around
A.D
. 800 or so. For centuries, it was open season on any work of art depicting a face. So the Sanjak was hidden! Even in Nevazir, the statue is always covered, except when the Elders meet to choose a new Imam. Then the statue is revealed so it can observe the proceedings—and perhaps influence them.”
“ ‘Influence’ them?”
Barzan shrugged. “Maybe it gives a sign. To me? It’s all ritual without meaning. The Sanjak is a statue, no more. To my grandfather, it’s all infused with meaning and the statue is a sacred object.”
Interesting,
Danny thought, but he didn’t see how any of this was going to save his life. He was about to remind Barzan about the tree rings, when the dogs scrambled to their feet and, barking madly, dashed around to the side of the house. Suddenly, Barzan’s cell phone tootled and he flipped it open. After a few words, he stood up and said, “I’ll be just a minute.”
“Problem?” Danny asked.
Barzan shook his head. “Some soldiers from the checkpoint up the road. They look in on me every couple of days.”
While his host met with the soldiers, Danny tried to make sense of what he’d been told. But none of it hung together, really. If Barzan was right, the Yezidis’ spiritual leader had been assassinated by Zebek—but why? And what was the connection with a religious statue in an underground city?
When Barzan returned a few minutes later, the dogs padding silently in his wake, Danny reminded him about the tree rings. “You said that’s what this is all about.”
“It
is
,” Barzan agreed. “But you need to know about the Sanjak—or none of it will make sense. Chris wanted to see it. In fact, he wanted a picture of it—and I agreed to help.” He paused. “Would you like to see it? The picture?”
“Absolutely.”
Barzan got up and went into the house. Moments later, he returned with a snapshot in his hand and a faint smile on his lips. “I’ll be interested to know what you think,” he said, handing the photo to Danny.
At a glance, he saw that the picture had been taken with a flash. A harsh white light suffused a cavelike chapel carved from the honey-colored tufa. At the center of the photo, resting on an altar, was a beautifully carved wooden bust—of Zerevan Zebek.
Danny gaped. There was very little hair on the back of his neck, but what was there stood up. It was creepy. “You’re kidding me.” The likeness was perfect.
“Chris had the same reaction.”
Danny couldn’t believe it. The heavily lidded eyes and high cheekbones, the cleft chin and widow’s peak. Whatever was going on was no accident. The Sanjak was Zebek. “How did Terio know who it was?”
“He didn’t. All he knew was that he’d seen the same face in Diyarbakir. A man getting out of a Bentley.”
“And he
remembered
that?”
Barzan nodded. “You don’t see a lot of Bentleys this far from Ankara. And if you do see one, it’s natural to check out the guy getting out of the back.”
Danny recalled his luncheon with Inzaghi and the priest joking,
You’d think the devil would have a Rolls . . .
Remembered, also, his meeting with “Belzer” in the Admirals Club.
They say he’s in bed with the Mafia . . . They say he’s the devil incarnate.
The phrase did a little somersault in Danny’s head. “So what are we supposed to think?” he asked. “That Zebek is the Tawus?”
Before Barzan could reply, his cell phone went off for the second time and he answered it with a sigh of impatience. After a brief conversation in a language that Danny didn’t understand, his host closed the phone and got to his feet. “We’ll have to finish this later,” he said. “I’ve got a car waiting.”